Bloomberg Surveillance · Monday, July 13, 2026
The upcoming midterm elections will largely be shaped by the current economic conditions, as the likelihood of new fiscal spending bills has diminished. Both House members and Senators will be running on the existing affordability landscape, with a complete stall in legislative activity hindering any significant policy shifts before the election.
“So effectively, what I mean by that is the probability of getting a new reconciliation bill through more money for the Pentagon, a gas tax holiday, any of those fiscal spend ideas that still percolate out in the market, The odds are effectively zero now that we move any of that kind of legislation. So for House members, they're going to have to run on gasoline at roughly these prices. On housing, you know, we're not going to get another major bill. This is the affordability landscape that members are going to be going into, and that's largely because there's just a complete stall of activity in both the House and the Senate, in part because of Lindsay Graham's passing, but there are many reasons besides that.”